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Kinship is key for altruistic species

KIN selection – the idea that individuals get their genes passed along by assisting close relatives to reproduce – helped solve one of evolution’s trickiest puzzles&colon; altruism. Eusocial insects, including some bees, wasps and ants, are an extreme example, where sterile workers have sacrificed their own reproduction to help rear the queen’s offspring.

Yet this bedrock of theory was recently shaken when Harvard University evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson claimed altruism evolved because it benefits groups, rather than genes. For such “group selection” to take place, he argued, animals don’t need to be closely related, they just need to stick together and …